Musk takes ‘crusade’ to Europe with Armie Hammer film

ByMike Wendling

An American vigilante tears across an unnamed European country, killing dozens of police officers and judges, slaughtering a gang of rapists, and killing a refugee family and a random civilian – all in the name of a crusade against Muslim migrants and "woke" government officials.

Citizen Vigilante, a film from German director Uwe Boll and starring actor Armie Hammer, is violent – and very schlocky – stuff.

Initially denied a rating by German's film regulator, it would likely have garnered very little attention, had it not caught the eye of the world's richest person.

• Listen to The Global Story: Citizen Vigilante and Elon Musk's war on 'woke' films

Elon Musk made the film free to view via his social media platform X for 48 hours in late June, and the subsequent attention briefly pushed the movie into the top of the charts of several streaming providers including Apple and Amazon.

At one point he reposted a message about the film that described vigilante murder as the "moderate response" to violent crimes committed by immigrants.

It's just one of many recent examples of the tech titan's increasing interest in extreme ideas and activists, and in particular his support of political parties and politicians on the right in Europe.

Musk left the Trump administration more than a year ago and his Doge project, which aimed to slash the size of the US federal government, has since been wound down.

But he has recently sought to conquer other political territory.

"This is a crusade," says Georgios Samaras, an assistant professor of public policy at King's College London who studies the European and US far right. "Musk uses the power he has to amplify the ideas that he thinks should dominate society. He knows he has the money and he knows he has the influence."

'Radicalised by his own network'

Much of that influence comes via X, formerly Twitter, the social media platform that Musk bought outright in 2022. Since stripping away many of the old Twitter's content moderation rules - derided as censorship by Musk and others - the network has become a haven for far-right beliefs and conspiracy theories.

In turn, X appears to have shaped Musk.

Although it's difficult to glean a cohesive worldview from social media fragments - Musk did not respond to requests for comment for this story - his output has demonstrated a growing obsession with race and white people in particular.

He has posted and reposted a slew of messages - often from white nationalist and far-right activists - portraying white people as under threat, including messages like "Whites are a rapidly dying minority" and "If White men become a minority, we will be slaughtered".

He has endorsed the leader of France's hard-right National Rally party, Marine Le Pen. "She is France's last hope," he wrote.

Musk also recently reposted a video from the far-right activist Tommy Robinson that suggested police are going easy on criminals if they have brown skin, with the comment "literally true".

He's also boosted right-wing politicians and parties in Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and the UK.

Although at one point he toyed with donating huge sums of money to Reform UK, he since broke with Nigel Farage over Farage's shunning of Robinson, and more recently has boosted the profile of Rupert Lowe's breakaway party Restore Britain – a Reform rival that seeks to take an even tougher line on immigration.

In June, after a Sudanese man was accused of a brutal stabbing in Northern Ireland, Musk shared a list of street protest locations posted by Robinson, adding: "Only by protesting REPEATEDY and LOUDLY will there be any change!!"

In other posts he claimed that former Prime Minister Keir Starmer "hates white people" and shared an image of the stabbing suspect with the comment "millions must go".

Mobs rioted on the streets of Belfast, where the stabbing happened. Police highlighted the role of social media in co-ordinating the disorder.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate, a research and advocacy group that has been the target of legal action by Musk in the past, tallied 4,000 calls for violence on X written as responses underneath posts by Musk, Lowe and Robinson.

"Many people on the right use Musk as a means to an end," says AJA Woods, a historian studying conspiracy theories and reactionary politics.

"He's seen as a source of funds, or someone who's in control of X so can be used to promote their ideas… he's a convenient ally."

When contacted for comment, Lowe described the CCDH report as "embarrassing guff" and called the BBC a "disgrace".

Remigration exported

Despite being in charge of several enormous companies, Musk regularly wades into ostensibly local disputes, not just in Belfast but across Europe, apparently gleaning much of his knowledge from people he follows on X.

"You find a tutoring relationship, one in which Musk is inducted into their talking points," says Ben Tarnoff, co-author of Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed.

One of those talking points is his embrace of the term "remigration". Anti-immigration advocates use it to refer to mass deportations, even of legal migrants.

In its extreme form, it means the removal through force or heavy persuasion of all non-whites or foreigners, even if they were born in or and have deep roots in their home countries.

Slightly more moderate versions focus on recent migrants or those not fully integrated into European societies.

The concept has been linked to violent activity, experts say, and Musk and X have not only been instrumental in spreading the idea across Europe, but in importing it to the United States, Tarnoff says. Last year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees US immigration, posted an X message consisting of one word: "Remigrate".

"Something that Musk shares with members of the American right and particularly with Donald Trump's circle is a view of Europe and the UK as the ancestral home of white civilisation, but a home that has surrendered itself to the woke forces of multiculturalism," says Tarnoff.

Saturday's attack at a Berlin Pride event - which was described by officials as an "Islamist terror attack" - gave far-right influencers that Musk converses with on X another opportunity to warn of civilizational collapse and call for drastic measures in response.

Musk later wrote in response to a Spanish anti-immigration influencer: "Anyone who opposes remigration is a traitor".

'Astonishingly bad' and 'fascist propaganda'

Citizen Vigilante was cheered by many far-right activists on X, even as others slammed the movie, not only for its politics but for its thin plot, cheap-looking special effects and abundance of gore.

After the publicity boost, Boll estimated that the film made about $600,000 from streaming, against a budget of $2m. Critics were scathing. Variety called it "astonishingly bad" while prominent American conservative commentator Rod Dreher called it "fascist propaganda", although he and some others on the right defended its depiction of a Europe in turmoil.

The film's portrayal of European society dovetails with the bleak vision pushed by Musk and others on the right – that citizens have been utterly betrayed by a corrupt establishment, that migrants are at the root of violence and chaos, and that extreme measures are needed to restore order.

"People who are complaining that he spends the first half of the movie murdering white people not migrants fail to understand… Always hang a traitor before you shoot an enemy," read one message reposted by Musk.

Challenged last week in an Economist interview on whether he was being irresponsible to promote a film which glorifies the murder of a Muslim family, Musk said: "It's a movie and it's worth watching."

"I don't think Europe's a hell hole," he said, but also insisted that "there was out of control rape and murder."

He also stood by previous statements that he believed civil war in the UK was "inevitable", and referring to Muslims, he said: "If you have a large and rapidly growing group of people whose beliefs are antithetical to Western beliefs, at some point there will be a reckoning."

The tech titan also said he had not visited the UK in several years.

Musk's defenders have often praised his professed support for unfettered online speech and have chalked some of his more extreme stances up to online exaggeration.

Others say his influence over politics in the UK and Europe is limited.

"I don't think he has much political sway in Britain or on the continent," says Gawain Towler, a former Reform UK director of communications who still supports the party.

Towler says he credits Musk with highlighting rape gangs in British cities and says he is relaxed about the tycoon's support for Lowe and Restore.

"I generally prefer the stuff he says about his businesses," he says.